Meme-supportive wetware

From: Chris Taylor (Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 13 Nov 2002 - 12:18:24 GMT

  • Next message: Wade Smith: "Fwd: A couple's work"

    Ok here's the premise: Memes (however much of an absolutist you are) are a useful way to move behavioural evolution along more quickly than genetic evolution. I (as an absolutist) believe that our whole personality and thread of conciousness is made of memes (meme-like things) interacting in complex, fluid ecologies. So how does such a mind
    (or even the sub-mind of a sub-concious beast that can learn) build an interface between the meme(-like thing) structures and the body they inhabit?

    I think (bear with me now...) there are *effectively* antennae that pick up unreal (i.e. 'imagined') aspects of memes from the dominant memeplex
    (stream of conciousness) at a given moment (leg movements etc. for running for a bus for e.g.). I think that we can almost see these antennae if we look at gross brain anatomy (i.e. we can't see the aerials but we can see the listening stations):

    If you chop your brain (theoretically) vertically and across just in front of your ears you'll basically divide it (as far as I can see) into mind and 'the rest' (sensory deciphering, movement and visceral control - language is a *very* late arrival and I think that Broca's/Wernicke's [er...] areas are a special weird case).

    The change occurs around that central sulcus - the gyrus in front is pre-motor, behind is motor (the one 'wired in' to your actual muscles etc). I reckon pre-motor 'resonates' (pick a word) somehow with aspects of memes and translates the message into hardware-speak. I say this because the whole of your body is effectively linearised along that interface between mind and the rest. Incidentally at the bottom(ish) is your hippocampus too - responsible for making fleeting memes permanent but under control of old centres (remember pleasure/fear etc first, then the specific mem(e)ory).

    Thoughts?

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
       Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
       http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed 13 Nov 2002 - 12:21:46 GMT